A pilot project for eye care practitioners to increase the effectiveness of aftercare information given to contact lens wearers

Research commissioned by the GOC in 2015 uncovered a significant difference between how much aftercare advice eye care practitioners were reported to be providing and how many patients recalled receiving it – just 48% of patients recalled receiving any aftercare at all.

In 2018, the GOC carried out a qualitative pilot to explore this gap and to see whether there may be simple interventions that can help eye care practitioners to deliver aftercare information in a way that is more readily recalled by patients.

Three interventions were developed based on insights gathered from existing academic research and behaviour change theory, and following scrutiny from an advisory group comprising of optical industry experts, behavioural science academics and behaviour change specialists.

Visual Aid

Pre-appointment questionnaire

Lifestyle-based questions

The ‘interventions’ have since been tested by a small group of eye care practitioners. Initial feedback suggests that the interventions could make a positive difference to both aftercare information recall as well as the overall patient experience.

Before and during Love Your Lenses Week 2019, eye care practitioners are being encouraged to get involved with helping to develop further and fine-tune these tools and resources, as well as potentially helping to design new ‘interventions’ that could improve this area of practice.

What can you do?

1

Try the tools

Test the tools in your own practice.
Adopt and adapt them to make them work for you (e.g. personalisation/branding).

2

Spread the word

Keep talking to all contact lens wearers and keep reminding them to love their lenses.

3

Encourage your team to get involved

Dedicate a Land The Message champion and train the rest of the team on how best to encourage patients to love their lenses.

You can find out more about some of the underlying psychology that affects how easily a message is recalled and how we used the information in our ‘Land The Message’ report [248KB, PDF], which can be downloaded below.

Eye care practitioners are encouraged to try out the new resources for themselves.
You can download the tools by putting in your email address below.
There are also 50 printed copies of the visual aid available, which can be posted to practices, email hello@loveyourlenses.com.

Any feedback is always welcomed.

Download Training Slides

Dedicate a ‘Land The Message champion’ in your practice to train the rest of the team how best to encourage patients to love their lenses. Download slides and a training session plan below.